Candace’s search

*All names have been changed

Search goal: Find Candace’s biological father

Candace is a Canadian adoptee who had been searching for her birth father for many years. She had met her birthmother, and her maternal half sister had tested, which helped separate Candace’s matches from maternal and paternal. Candace also had a bit of non identifying information about her birthfather, including approximate age, and a possible photograph of him. Candace had a good lead on who her birthfather might be, and wanted help to confirm her findings.

Though Candace did not have any close paternal matches, she did have lots of more distant ones. She had done a lot of research already and figured out that two of her paternal match groups were from two families that had been in Ontario for many generations. She had found the couple that connected the match groups, and had one semi distant match that was descended from the couple.

The common ancestral Richardson couple had moved from Ontario to Winnipeg with their 5 children. Based on their ages, I figured that one of the 5 Richardson children would be a
grandparent of Candace. I started researching the 5 children to see if any had moved back to Ontario in their adult lives. Candace had also researched the 5 children and had found one daughter that had moved back to Ontario, but Candace did not seem to have any DNA matches from that daughter’s spouse. She was also in contact with a grandson of that daughter, who we will call Neil.

Of the 5 Richardson children, two of them had married a set of two other siblings, and one of Candace’s closest paternal DNA matches was descended from one of these couples. Candace did not share any additional match groups with this match, so we ruled out those 2 children. Another daughter did not have any children. Another daughter only had one son, who had died very young. This left the Richardson daughter that had moved back to Ontario. She had only had one son, who was the right age to be Candace’s birthfather.

Logically, Candace and I figured that this man was likely Candace’s birthfather, even though the Richardson daughter’s spouse did not seem to have any DNA connections with Candace.

Candace and I eventually had a video call with Neil, where we explained the search and why we thought Neil’s dad was Candace’s birthfather, using the research and DNA evidence. He also thought that the photograph Candace had indeed was his father. We encouraged him to do a DNA test to see if our theory was correct. He agreed to, and 7 weeks later, Neil showed up as a half sibling match on Candace’s match list. Candace is glad to know the identity of her birthfather.